


Thirteen Ways

by alestar



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Bat Family, M/M, Undersexed Jason Todd, romcom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-20 23:24:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10672923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alestar/pseuds/alestar
Summary: There's not so much a plot here as a pastiche of JayTim things I like.  This started out as a 5 Times fic, but I actually have no ideas, or discipline.In the end, Jason had spent so long eking the erotic from the everyday that when something forthrightly sexual presented itself, he completely failed to deal with it appropriately.





	Thirteen Ways

You don’t have to go looking for pornography and lustful images—they will find you.  
\-- Luke Gilkerson, [13 Ways to Ruin Your Life with Lust](http://www.covenanteyes.com/2009/02/04/13-ways-to-ruin-your-life-with-lust/)

 

 

The first time Jason looked at Tim Drake and thought, _I wonder what it's like to fuck that kid_ , he'd just seen Stephanie Brown without her headgear on for the first time.  Jason had seen photos of her and knew she and Tim used to date-- but then one night they were fresh from a fight, standing in an alley in the Narrows, and Stephanie pulled off her hood, hair mussed and wild, and suddenly she was this gorgeous blonde with a square jaw and perky tits and a ridiculously expressive face, and the fact came to life in a new way.  Not some prep school douche with his hot blonde girlfriend-- but level-headed, pragmatic Tim gravitating toward Stephanie probably despite himself.  Maybe on a rooftop, struggling to keep his cool, with Stephanie's hair twisting around them in the wind.

He could imagine Tim's heart pounding in his chest under Stephanie's hands, the cache of consequences crowded out of his mind, all those thoughts shutting down, his mouth opening under hers.  Stephanie's soft little sighs, maybe.  Tim's watchful eyes falling closed.

 

+

 

The second time Jason thought about what Tim might be like was inspired more by boredom than lust, although Tim being tarted up for undercover work didn't hurt.  

A local mob boss was making headway in Gotham by blackmailing several high-ranking police officers; Tim and Cass had been showing up undercover in a club for the last four months, and Tim was finally going to make a move to hack into the on-premises server.  Jason was back-up in case something went wrong-- but Tim was irritatingly meticulous when he had time to plan, so it was probably going to be a long night of Jason sitting on the roof, taming pigeons with french fries and waiting for the all-clear signal.  He'd been sitting in the penthouse for the last 15 minutes while Tim outlined in tremendous depth the security protocols in the comm software he'd just uploaded; but the reasons Tim was in charge of the tech stuff were that he was good at it, and they all trusted him to do it, and no one else gave a shit.  Cass listened politely, probably actually in a deep state of meditation.

Tim was already dressed up for the club.  He always had to go pretty far out, and it was kind of a mystery why he continued doing undercover jobs even as his celebrity as Tim Wayne grew and grew, except that he must love it.  His hair was dyed red with dark roots, dark eyebrows, and he was wearing a nose ring and eye makeup behind thick-rimmed glasses.  

He looked sultry and slim, and you'd never know from looking at him that he could take down a dozen mafiosi with a metal stick.  Jason watched his hands as he talked.

Jason was only helping out for tonight, so he didn't know what the undercover roles were-- but he could only assume Tim was playing a kid in search of a good time, some molly, some crank, some protection; a talented street kid in need of a benefactor.  He could picture Tim in his club get-up, feigning inebriation but eyes lit with intelligence, folding in a booth over some solicitous bad guy's hard-on.

Tim dropped a knapsack on the coffee table in front of Jason.  "Did you hear any of that?  Do you know how to activate the comm?"  His mouth twisted in irritation, shiny with lip gloss.  

Jason grinned up at him.  "Something explodes," he said, "I'll show up."

 

+

 

The next handful of times, drawn out over the next couple of years, were all pretty similar to each other.   

They all involved Tim doing things that weren't sexual but that made Jason think of what they would be like in a different context.  Tim getting thrown against a wall or splayed on the ground during a spar.  Tim's groan of relief when he was sinking into a chair after a long night or rubbing topical analgesics onto his arms.  One time it was just Tim leaned against a bar drinking a soda. In the middle of taking a drink, he paused to listen to a nearby conversation, face alert, eyebrows drawing together-- and the damp bottle hung there, pressed to his open mouth.

 

+

 

It was all pretty generic, though.  Jason was a virile young man-- who frankly did not get laid as often as he would like, since he seemed to only associate with people he was using or people he was trying to take care of, or Bat family, and none of those seemed like great booty call material.  So Jason spent a lot of time both very deliberately _not_ thinking about sex and low-grade thinking about sex a lot.  

Jason looked at the chatty, dark-eyed gas station attendant and thought, _I wonder what it's like to fuck that kid_ ; he looked at the barista who gave him whipped cream with no up-charge and thought about licking cream off her mouth; and God knows he thought way too much about Roy and Kori fucking, and what gravity-defying, crazy athletic shit _that_ must be.

So just because Jason sometimes thought about what Tim would look like hooking up with Steph, or rubbing one out leaned against a smokestack, or getting an anonymous blowjob in the dark corner of a warehouse, didn't mean _he_ wanted to fuck Tim.  He wondered those things about a lot of people.  It was mostly aesthetic.

Then one night in February, Tim got caught on the edge of a warehouse explosion, and it became a little more specific.

Tim was rolling away from the explosion, and the gasoline on the ground soaked through enough of Tim's uniform that even the flame retardant fabric caught fire in the sparks.  Jason jumped down from the building above while Tim stoically tore off his bandolier and armlets, then jerked his uniform top off over his head, pulling his gloves off with it.  When Jason landed next to him, Tim was shaking the inside-out gloves off the tips of his fingers and throwing the flaming heap to the ground.  

He stomped on it, trying to put out the fire. Jason watched for a moment, then said, "I don't know, Timmy, I think your shirt's toast."

"Ugh," Tim said. Jason grinned.  

Tim finished tamping out the flame before gathering up the ruined fabric, while Jason called the fire department.  As soon as the line disconnected, Tim said, "Can I borrow your jacket?"

Jason snorted.  "You can't take care of your clothes, so I gotta give you mine?"  But he was already slinging the jacket off his shoulders.

"Or we could stay huddled next to this warehouse fire, I'm fine with that."

"Or I could leave your ass here, and the nice firemen can lend you something."  He threw the jacket, and Tim caught it.

"You wouldn't do that," Tim said, pulling the jacket around him.  "See what a gentleman you are?"

Then he grinned crookedly at Jason, light from the fire moving over him.  His hair was sticking up from where he'd pulled his top off, and he was bare from the waist up except for Jason's too-large jacket.

And something stupid happened in Jason's brain. Jason had seen Tim shirtless plenty of times, but the firelight made strange shadows on the muscles of Tim's stomach between the plackets of Jason's coat, above the line of his utility belt-- christ, something about being shirtless with a utility belt on-- and suddenly Jason's thoughts whited out in a wash of dismay and want and possessiveness.  He stared at Tim, mouth open, thinking in images.  Luckily, Tim couldn't see his face.  

At Jason's silence, Tim glanced around.  "You see something?"

"No," Jason said, after a beat.  His voice sounded weird.  "Thought I did."

 

+

 

Because Jason's life was so stupid, things progressed pretty quickly from there into a full-on crush, which was so _stupid_.  It made him surly and aggressive with the whole Bat clan-- but luckily they were used to those vicissitudes from Jason, so no one suspected its origins in bitchy, ambivalent longing.  

The _unlucky_ thing was that Jason was in the middle of a long, delicate series of gang negotiations, so he really didn't have the luxury of leaving Gotham, or even of _not_ talking to Tim on a weekly basis.  And Tim was in a lot of Gotham news, so it was hard to keep an eye on the city without seeing lots of photos of Tim buying coffee, Tim getting into a taxi, Tim smiling bashfully in a suit and tie.  It was pretty fucking irritating.  

And it wasn't just the scritch of Tim's familiar face in photos that prickled like bramble beneath Jason's skin. It was the sensation of looking at those news articles and knowing the truth about Tim Wayne; knowing what he was really like, what he was really dealing with, while everyone else was speculating on his newest romance or his fashion sense or his moves to wrest power from his adopted father.  

Because Jason was close to Tim. That was objectively true.

And the fact was that Jason probably _could_ piece together what it would be like to fuck Tim.

It would be intense, Jason was pretty sure.  Tim worked too hard and probably saw as little play as Jason did.  And he was careful with his body in a way that someone like Dick just wasn't.  Dick was fiery and warm and demonstrative, and he was _extremely serious_ about family, but he was blase about sex, and he'd had so much alien goddess snatch that he probably found earth blowjobs boring.  Tim, on the other hand, played it close to the chest.  He could be fiery, but his home was in reticence.  He probably did not find blowjobs boring.  

He would be quiet and solemn until he was gone with desire, and then he would make noises he couldn't help.  Jason could see him coming apart beneath him.  Bucking in orgasm, teeth clenched, staring up at Jason like he'd been fucking _betrayed_ , coming and coming in the warm vise of Jason's hand.  

"Look," said Jason.  "Stay out of my business."

Tim blinked. For a moment, there was only the sound of the burbling of the water fountain in the middle of the room and quiet conversation at nearby tables.

"You came here to ask me to adjust by-laws for the Neon Knights so that you can bring in some of your groups, and now you're telling me to stay out of your business?"

They were at a table on the observation deck of Wayne Tower, in the early afternoon.  Tim's hair was held away from his face with a little clip, and he was wearing dark blue slacks and a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up his forearms.  And Jason was here as a civilian, so he couldn't even stare at the unbuttoned throat of Tim's dress shirt with impunity.  

"If you want to change some of your restrictions, we could save a lot of people, but the rest of the deal is mine."

"I'm _helping_ , Jason."

Jason couldn't think of what to say to that. Tim really was helping.  

"Fuck you," he said.

 

+

 

This was all undertaken against a backdrop of ass-kicking, of course.  Never-ending ass-kicking, and sometimes Jason was the one getting his ass kicked.

Life continued its awkward roll forward, like a jittering wheel on a gravel road, pitching and heaving with unexpected losses and blessings, and Jason kept seeing Tim around, sometimes in civvies, sometimes not.  No matter the discomforts and distractions, there was always some weird stuff happening in that mysterious center of gravity that held them all together.  Family, Jason supposes.

As far as anyone knew, Damian didn't have a real birthday, so at some point they'd started celebrating it on March 27th, a date which probably Alfred had decided on and probably in reference to something sentimental-- but no one was ever forthcoming on that front, so the mystery became a running joke.

"It's in honor of Mariah Carey's birthday," Jason volunteered.  He was sprawled out next to Damian on a sofa at the penthouse, at Damian's ostensible birthday party.  Titus lay at their feet.  It was strange: Jason's relationship with the Bat family on the field was tense, but somehow he kept showing up to family events, possibly because Babs kept inviting him.  The first time had probably, honestly, been for the sake of making people nervous-- but they'd all just rolled with it, and banter in groups had always had a pacifying effect on Jason, and it was just hard to be pissy with so much ice cream around.  "That's why, right?"

Damian snorted, and Jason smiled over at him.  He was a complete asshole, and he loved to talk about Jason's less-than-impressive pedigree, but Jason loved him. He made everyone uncomfortable, and you never had to be careful about pointing out what a giant fucking weirdo he was.  He never got offended by people pointing out (for example) that he didn't have a real birthday.  

Dick laughed.  "Why do you know Mariah Carey's birthday?"  He was sitting next to Barbara on an opposite sofa wearing jeans and a Blüdhaven Bloodhounds t-shirt, holding a small plate of cake.  

"I'm in my early twenties because I was _dead_ for several years," said Jason. "I know Mariah Carey."

"I'm older than you are, and I didn't know Mariah Carey's birthday."

Jason grinned.  "That's because you're a square."

"I don't think people say square anymore," Bruce offered, standing at the kitchen island with a cup of coffee.  For some reason, Damian nodded.  

"Today really is Mariah Carey's birthday," said Tim, looking down at his phone, "How did you even know that?"  He was slouched on another sofa between Stephanie and Cassandra, wearing a pale v-neck sweater with the sleeves pushed up to his forearms, and grey slacks, like a complete asshole who Jason wanted to touch.  He glanced warily at Jason.

"Frank O'Hara's birthday," said Cass.  She was wearing a pointed birthday hat.  She was the only person wearing one.  

"See," said Dick, "knowing Frank O'Hara's birthday is much cooler than knowing Mariah Carey's birthday. Yours is like negative cool points."

"Whatever," said Jason.  He snapped his fingers at Stephanie.  "Brown, celebrity birthday, go."

Stephanie raised an eyebrow.  "I know Bruce's birthday...?"

"No, fail."  He pointed at Barbara.  "Babs, you're a librarian, make us proud."

Barbara smiled tolerantly at him. "Does it have to be a celebrity birthday? It's the anniversary of the Tenerife airport disaster, does that count?  I know that's not as important as Mariah Carey's birthday."

Then Cass asked about the Tenerife airport disaster, and Barbara answered her with an explanation that started 120 years before the Tenerife airport disaster.  Alfred interrupted them to ask Cass in sign language if she wanted more cake-- a habit, maybe, or nostalgia, since by then Cass was fully fluent-- and she signed back _yes, please_.  

"The guy who invented Campbell Soup died today in 1900," Tim said, still looking at his phone.

"Yes, that's the one," Damian said, nodding, wiping frosting from his mouth. "That is why."

 

+

 

Here's how it finally played out:

In the end, Jason had spent so long eking the erotic from the everyday that when something forthrightly sexual presented itself, he completely failed to deal with it appropriately.  

He was going home early, around one in the morning, when he stopped by an old bell tower to check his messages.  He was in full uniform, but he landed silently on the wall of the large belfry, and he was pulling out his phone when a faint light caught his eye.  It was the light from someone else's phone on the opposite side of the bell chamber.  

The streetlights below filled the space with shadows, but when Jason traced the edge of the chamber, moving silently around the giant bell, he could see it clearly: Tim curled into a shadow, tucked against the ornately curved wall of the belfry, faced sideways so he could see out across the city, but with his face bent down and faintly illuminated, one hand moving in his lap while he jacked off to porn on his phone.  Jason couldn't see the screen, but he could see the line of Tim's earbuds, and he could imagine the sounds coming through them.  

"What are you doing," Jason said sharply.

Tim's head jerked up, and he flipped his phone face-down to the ground, pulling the earbuds from his ears.  The hand in his lap froze.  

In a moment of complete insanity, Jason added, "This is a _church_."

Tim tucked himself back into his uniform, deftly sinking into a shadow to zip up.  He glared back at Jason.  He didn't stand up, Jason noticed, probably because his dick was still hard, and the uniform jock made that pretty uncomfortable.

"This hasn't been a church for _twenty years_ ," Tim said, though he did look kind of abashed.  "What the hell is your problem?  What are you doing here?"  

"Just passing through," Jason said.  "I didn't expect to see--"  He gestured angrily at Tim's lap, though by now it was hidden by his knees where Tim crouched in the shadows.  

Tim's face flushed red behind the domino mask, but he scowled.  "So you stopped by to throw out centuries of bro code, is that what you're doing?"

"Why aren't you patrolling?"

"I _am_ patrolling, I'm just taking a quick break. I'm allowed to take breaks."

Jason's frown deepened.  "No, you're not."

Toward the end of his darker days, still in the red mental fog of the Lazarus Pit, Jason could sometimes recognize that he wasn't acting in his own self-interest, or in anyone's interest; that he was basically acting like a crazy person.  Back then, recognizing his madness had only served to stir up all his resentments and circle him back to the start of crazy, but eventually, he'd cooled-- or maybe warmed-- and started to see things more clearly.  

But now that feeling was resurfacing.  He was having an out-of-body experience.

"This is not a safe situation," he said.  "You're not paying attention.  What if I had been Ra's al Ghul?"

Tim's mouth twisted.  "Pretty sure Ra's al Ghul honors the bro code."

"You should go home.  That's where we go when we-- I mean, I don't.  When you--"  He cut himself off.  Was he about to claim to Tim that he never masturbated?  What the fuck was happening?  "Go home," he concluded.  

"The penthouse is 20 minutes away," Tim said, and even in the dimness of the belfry Jason could see his face darken further.  They were dangerously close to talking about how long it took Tim to beat off.  "It's not worth the trip."

"I have a safehouse just two minutes from here."

Tim lapsed into silence, staring at Jason.  After a moment, he shook his head and said, "Are you inviting me to your house to jack off?"

Inside the safety of the helmet, Jason grimaced.  "Yes."

"You realize that's kind of weird, right?"  

"Well, it's not-- safe.  Here."

"Yeah," said Tim slowly.  "Plus this is a church, even though they have raves here on Friday nights."

Jason nodded.  "Right."

Tim pushed to his feet to lean against the belfry wall, and Jason took a step backward.  He kept his eyes fixed on Tim's face. He watched as the last of the embarrassment and indignation in Tim's face faded into blankness as Tim stared back.

"You've been acting really weird for the last month," Tim said.

"No, I haven't."

"But this, right now, is the weirdest."

Jason gave a short, dry laugh.  "It's definitely not."  

Then Tim took a step forward, and Jason took another step back.  Tim cocked his head and said, "Are you turned on?"  

He said it lightly enough, a curl of amusement at the corner of his mouth, that he'd be able to deflect no matter what Jason said.  They'd both learned in their early adolescence to fight standing on the balls of their feet so that they could mobilize in any direction-- and Tim, at some point, had learned to talk the same way.

There was another long moment of silence.  

Then Jason said, "Actually I think I'm having a nervous breakdown."

They stared at each other in the dim light of the belfry.  Tim didn't come any closer, which was good because Jason couldn't retreat any further without putting the bell between them.  Tim opened his mouth to speak-- and suddenly there was the sound of screeching tires below them, followed by gunfire and someone's scream.  Jason's and Tim's heads snapped up, pulled on the same string.  

In one move, they bolted from the bell tower, Tim going high on his grappling line, Jason going low on the roof of the erstwhile church, scrabbling from hand-hold to hand-hold, eyes fixed on the street.  

It was a gang hit, but a largely inept one: Jason landed on the street next to a young tough, who was shocked but uninjured.  He slipped his pistol from its holster and timed a shot into the fleeing car's tire so that the car careened away from traffic and into a low cinderblock wall.

"How's that nervous breakdown going," Tim said in his ear.  His voice was calm, steady, professional.  Jason could see him in a corner of his vision, landing on the street twenty feet in front of the crashed car.  

"On hold," Jason said.  Behind him, several men spilled out of a nearby apartment building with guns drawn.

Forty minutes later, most of the firearms had been confiscated, several young men had been arrested, and a couple of Neon Knights pamphlets had been discreetly shuffled into the hands of some bystanders. 

A city truck had been called to tow the crashed car, but Jason watched meditatively from a nearby darkened alley as some kids pulled off its remaining tires.  The last one was heading into the darkness when Jason heard Tim's voice on comms again.

"Frat Boy Frenzy III."

Jason lifted his eyebrows.  "Excuse me?"  

He turned and watched Tim drop from a fire escape into a crouch in the alley.  "That's what I was watching on my phone," he said.  "Seen it?"

Jason shook his head mutely.  Tim stood and handed him one of the confiscated guns, so they could trace it later, and Jason slipped it into a holster at his thigh.  

"It's not bad." Tim pulled the comm out of his ear and slipped it into his utility belt. "Though we probably shouldn't talk about it right next to a church."

In Jason's experience, frat house porn usually involved a lot of impersonal gang-banging, homophobic objectification; some smart, scrappy kid pushed onto the floor and covered in come.  The thought of Tim watching that, face lit by his phone, palming his hard cock, mouth a grim line, sent a hot shock of desire through Jason.

"I got that safehouse nearby," he said, voice low.

Tim nodded, feeding line back into the grappling gun, eyes lowered.  "Good call."

 

+

 

Here's what it's like to fuck that kid: strong thighs, strong hands; a host of sexual interests brewed in the mind of an insular, over-scheduled computer nerd; the solemn intensity that Jason expected; and a strange undercurrent of familiar banter and goofy, dizzy relief. 

And Jason wasn't the world's greatest detective or anything, but where Tim in the heat of the moment was concerned-- his whole body going still, the quiet O of his mouth-- he'd pretty much nailed it, so to speak.

"God," Tim groaned.  "Why do you love puns so much."  

In the fire of his want, Jason's imagination had lingered on Tim in climax, and the activities leading up to it, so this was one thing he hadn't considered: Tim in lassitude, Gotham's second most uptight vigilante curled up in the bedsheets like he had nowhere to be.  They lay on a mattress in the dark of Jason's safehouse, curled toward the window.  There was a washcloth on the floor from where Jason had cleaned Tim up, afterwards, while Tim watched him with soft eyes.  Jason couldn't stop touching him, and Tim pushed up against him, leaned into it, at every touch.  Jason kissed the back of his neck, and even in his languor Tim shook a little. 

These stories were supposed to play out so that the reality didn't live up to the dream or (in nicer stories, in movie stories) the reality was far better than the fantasy, but in this case, except for the lack of urgency, and Jason's permission to pull the sheet off of Tim's shoulder, things felt pretty much the same.  The two of them giving each other grief in low tones.  Tim looking hot in filtered streetlight. 

Jason nosed at his hairline. "I like the ambiguity," he murmured.

Tim laughed into the blankets, and Jason could feel the motion where he was pressed along Tim's back.  He reached behind him and threaded his fingers into Jason's hair.  

"You're so much weirder than I thought you'd be."

Jason grinned against his neck.  "No way, baby bird," he said. "I'm just what you expected."

  
  
  
\--

**Author's Note:**

> I struggled at first to come up with a decent title for this, so in my desperation I tried out the [Title Generator](http://www.ruggenberg.nl/titels.html)\-- here are the top 5 auto-generated titles, which frankly would make great titles for any JayTim fic, so you should use them:
> 
> 1\. The Hard Eye  
> 2\. Seventh Pleasure  
> 3\. The Swollen Boy  
> 4\. Red Twins
> 
> and my personal favorite:
> 
> 5\. What Ship


End file.
